Can there be science to 'gun safety' or is just capitalizing on a political hot topic and trying to make statistics into science?
Pediatric leaders and researchers will tackle the complex and politically charged subject of gun violence during a special symposium today at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.
The symposium, "Protecting the Health of Our Children Through Scientific Approaches to Gun Safety and Violence Prevention" will focus on guns and youth, violent media, guns and suicide, the pathway to violence, and community efforts to prevent gun violence. In other words, there is no science. Yesterday, another study said there were no links between violence and video games so things that are called studies are really geared more for confirmation bias than science.
Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, FAAP, will summarize what psychology has to say about the link between screen violence and aggression and what future research should focus on. He also will touch on the disconnect between what surveys find about violence and what the public believes.
"Decades of research have established a link between screen violence and real world aggression. Our challenge is to translate these findings into actionable public health strategies," said Dr. Christakis, George Adkins Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute. This makes sense, of course, if cigarette advertising is blamed for smoking and Democrats buy enough ads saying Republicans hate minorities, there must be a good reason. It convinces people. So enough violent media - be it nature programs, video games or Hollywood films, would have an effect. Yet the effect is not consistent. Instead, the effect are only aggravated in people with other issue. Violent media magnifies mental problems but doesn't create them.
The symposium will be held from 12:30-2:30 p.m. in the Washington Convention Center.
Topics and presenters include:
- 12:30 p.m. – "Overview of Gun Violence and Youth," presented by Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH, RAND Health Corp., Santa Monica, Calif.
- 12:50 p.m. – "Violent Media – What We Know and What Do We Need to Learn?" presented by Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, FAAP, Seattle Children's Research Institute, University of Washington, Seattle.
- 1:10 p.m. – "Guns and Suicide," presented by Matthew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Boston.
- 1:30 p.m. – "The Pathway to Violence – Early Identification of Violence in Children and Young Adults," presented by E. Jane Costello, PhD, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.
- 1:50 p.m. – "Community-Based Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence and Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Young Adults," presented by Daniel W. Webster, ScD, MPH, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, Baltimore.